The essence of F***

‘I had to fake it till I made it’ is Rhianna’s explanation for how she became ‘so comfortable in her sexuality’, a sexuality which Esquire magazine described as ‘the very essence of F***’.  I think I found these statements some of the most disturbing of the whole interview.  Essentially it was a discussion not about the individual life choices and experiences of one 24 year old but a moment, for those who could see it, of real honesty about the pornification of the music industry and indeed the universe.

There have been a lot of responses that have raised concern about Rhianna’s comments about her relationship with Chris Brown, jumping to reiterate that abuse is never acceptable and berating Rihanna for not giving a more nuanced  response, especially since she was a ‘role model’. But even if she had given a model response would we want to be promoting her and by implication the industry she is involved in, as a role model.  

It makes no sense to say that Rhianna is comfortable in her own sexuality if she had to fake it until she made it. If she had to fake it, it is not her sexuality it is someone else’s, and is not about her pleasure, desire or sexual expression it is about someone else’s. But what choice did she have? As Gail Dines puts it the choice for many young women ‘is to be f***able or invisible’.

Rhianna was described as the very essence of ‘F***’ not ‘sex’, not ‘beauty’ not ‘love’ but ‘F***’ There is something in the word F*** that is inherently aggressive and violating.  The way we use the word reflects this. Have you ever heard anyone say ‘My love shall we have a F***’? It is rarely something mutual but normally describes one person doing something to another without consent and to the detriment of that person. I wonder if the pictures of Rhianna after Chris Brown assaulted her contributed to her ‘F*** essence’?

Rhianna stated that she was not sure that that was what she had been aiming for. I am fairly convinced it was exactly what many in the industry where aiming at for her and I’m not sure she really ever had a choice about how people would see her. But here we are, in a situation where the highest accolade for a woman is that she is the essence of ‘F***’.

Of course the other option available for women (though it is a little more niche and American) apart from invisible or ‘F***able’ is to be virginal, so virginal in-fact that you can’t even get raped and certainly can’t conceive from rape.

Is this why 50 Shades of Gray is so popular? I have to be honest I have not read it and do not intend to, but I have read substantial amounts about it. From what I gather the book is all about Ana becoming F***able and F***ed by a powerful, rich and controlling man. Women who have been so surrounded by pornified images and narratives, but for the most part still not able to overcome the social mores and watch porn, are perfectly able to read something penned by the hand of a woman (but really written years ago in the offices of Hustler et al.) that dresses itself up as a romance novel, and dream about gaining some value through becoming ‘F***able’.

And is this why so many people seem so confused about what rape is? ‘Cause clearly if a powerful man like Assange “inserts” (thanks George!) while you are asleep you have been ‘F***ed’ and should therefore be flattered. When ‘the essence of F***’ becomes the dictated ambition of women rape becomes a compliment.

It looks like the ‘essence of F***’ is here to stay impregnating every part of our lives, it looks like it is determined to be the dominant definition of what it is to be a woman, forcing all others into obscurity. But I for one refuse to be invisible and they can think of a million names to dismiss me with, but I will not become invisible.

I will not become invisible because I have unearthed other archetypes and role models, some in legend, some in story but my most favourite in scripture. A diversity of strong courageous diverse women who lived life on their terms creatively challenging the patriarchy around them and a Jesus who meet them on their own terms and offered them not 50 shades of ‘F****ed up’ but a celebratory rainbow of humanity. 

The pornification of childhood

My small daughter’s life is extremely edited.  She is likely to grow up thinking the only program on TV is Abney and Teal. She will have a surprise when she gets to school and discovers that the bedtime stories she’s come to love actually don’t have an equal representation of men and women and that the world is not a fair and egalitarian place.  And she will at some point encounter that horrifying narrative of the princess.

What has any of this got to do with porn? Well what I would like to argue is that:

1.) We use story and narrative to understand and explain the world and this is especially important to children.

2.) There is a particular narrative that Porn tells

3.) This narrative has been present in childhood for a very long time, but is now becoming more insidious and endemic and it primes children to accept and expect a porn narrative.

So what is the porn narrative? Essentially it is that women exist for the sexual pleasure of men and their worth is connected to how sexually attractive they are to men. Masculinity is defined by sexual violence and predatory conquest within the porn narrative. 

Recently I re-watched Disney’s Snow White. In an early scene Snow White is singing about wishing for the one she loves to find her, she is clearly not talking about someone she knows, she looks like a teenager. Suddenly an adult man appears beside her she is clearly frightened and runs away but then listens at the window flattered by the attention. We all know what happens at the end of the story, that while unconscious, having been drugged, this same man sexually assaults her and then they live happily ever after. (While we are at it Sleeping Beauty is the story of a women out cold, a strange man climbs through her window and sexually assaults her. This is not OK.) But that initial scene struck me as I had just finished Gail Dines’ chapter on the use of pseudo-child images and the narratives were very similar ‘At first she was nervous, but she wanted it really’.

So these storys we tell young girls and boys that normalise sexual violence and male ownership are far from new, but while they used to function to groom young girls into being submissive compliant wives who on getting wed discovered Cinderella had no better time of it in the happily ever, now we are seeing a narrative creep into childhood that has a slightly different angle. Building on the princess, girls are now taught that they must exude sexiness in order to please the men.

So enter beauty pageants (http://www.missminiprincess.co.uk/), Bratz by day Catz by night, (http://www.bratz.com/), pole dancing dolls, cute little playboy bunny’s everywhere, make up and high heels for toddlers, even Lego thinks a girls preoccupation should be beautifying herself (http://friends.lego.com/en-us/Products/Details/3187.aspx), and don’t even let me get started on Hannah Montana. While grooming our girls we equally groom our young men into a sense of privileged and a warped idea of masculinity. How many times have you seen 'naughty' 'trouble' etc written across toddlers just because they happen to be male. Boys watch the princess stories too and learn they are to be characterless thugs. Boys also play with dolls, only theirs come with weapons and biologically impossible muscles and a noticable absence of genitals.  

So the messages of porn are infecting early childhood, grooming and priming children so that as they enter adolescents their space and freedom to explore and discover their own sexuality is severely restricted. And now they are bombarded with normalising attitudes in magazines, television programs and even on occasion what purports to be objective positive information. Girls begin to experience sexual violence and intimidation in school environments and discover adults are ill equipped to respond and protect them, that victims get blamed and perpetrators get kudos. They begin to hate every part of their body because, like the all seeing eye in lord of the rings, the pornofied gaze is everywhere. The only option of validation left for a young woman is as a sexual object and the ultimate expression of masculinity for a young man is to perpetrate sexual violence.

I know some people think my anxiety about my own daughter and other childrens experience of childhood is misplaced, that it is not that dangerous or toxic environment I think it is, that body dismorphia and self loaving are not inevitable.  I agree, they are not, but in our current climate they are probable and I am not kidding myself about the kind of effort we need to make to provide an alternative storyline for young people.  Hugh Hefner himself said ‘I don’t care if a baby holds up a playboy bunny rattle’. So let’s not pretend that a powerful industry is not trying to groom the next generation of product and purchaser. 

The beginners guide to consensual sex

It has come to my attention that a great many people seem not to have the understanding and skills to enjoy healthy consensual sex.

I thought it might therefore be useful to outline here in brief some basic pointers. However if you are still unsure what consensual sex is I strongly advise you to seek further support before embarking on any sexual activity. This information is for those who are unsure how to ensure their partner is able to consent. Those who are not being given the space to consent are not the ones who don't understand consent.

1.) In order to engage in consensual sex it is important to understand what consent means. The law defines consent as follows:

"A person consent's if they agree by choice and have the freedom and capacity to make that choice'

I've highlighted certain words here lets take a look at them one by one:

Agree: They were able to say 'no' and they choose to say yes.
Example:  'Would you like to have sex love,or do you need to get some sleep?'
                 'Oh yes please, I'd love to have sex right now'

Choice: They had at least two non harmful or threatening options.
Example: 'Would you like to have sex love?'
               'No thanks, I'm watching TV at the moment'.

Freedom: They are not coerced, manipulated or threatened in any way. It is therefore important that you don't physically restrain, threaten or otherwise attempt to control your partners behavior. If you are unsure you could try these line 'It's really important to me that we have consensual respectful sex, do you in any way feel you are unable to say no to sex?', 'Please don't feel any pressure if you don't want to have sex, I would much prefer it if you said no than do something you are unhappy or uncomfortable with.' or 'I understand that if you say no to sex you are not rejecting me as a person but that you don't want to have sex, or you are not comfortable with the particular sexual act.'

Capacity: A person does not have capacity if they are under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or asleep (the law also states that anyone bellow 13 cannot consent and that it is illegal for anyone bellow 16 to have sex). If you want to have sex with your partner but they are asleep it is not possible to have consensual sex with them as a person who is asleep does not have capacity to consent.

We suggest the most appropriate action would be to leave them to sleep and get on with something else. Perhaps you could compose a poem for your partner about how much you appreciate them, or spend some time thinking about what you could do to sexually pleasure them. Then at a more appropriate time (probably not when they first wake up - especially if they are not a morning kind of person) you could share your poem or thoughts with them. If however you really want to have sex right then and there and you suspect they may also want to have sex you could gently wake them up and ask if they want to have sex. Proceed with great caution however as it is highly probable that they do not want to have sex and will be very annoyed at being woken up. But at least this way you have given them the opportunity to consent and have not committed a crime. If you are worried that you may want to have sex with your partner when they are asleep why not try this: 'Sometimes at 2 in the morning I'm awake and sometimes think it would be nice to have sex. How would you feel if I gently woke you up and asked if you were also up for it?'

2.) Talking really facilitates consensual sex, as many of the examples above have highlighted. It is apparently common for people to become concerned when they realise that they can't just have sex whenever they feel like it with whoever they feel like, that they will have to start getting written consent before every act. This is not necessary and actually also not sufficient. Consent can be withdrawn by either party at any point so even if you had a written agreement it would become invalid the minute it is signed. But don't panic! You can talk about sex. I am sure you arrange and organise many joint activities with your partner, like your social diary, what your going to do at the weekend, maybe you discus house chores, perhaps childcare arrangements. All these joint activities are things you discus and agree with your partner, its exactly the same skill set its just about healthy respectful communication and agreement. If your finding it hard try this line 'Love, I find it a little hard to talk about sex, I feel a little awkward and embarrassed, but I think it's really important to our sex life that we have good, honest discussions about sex so that we can both enjoy it and ensure that we are respecting each others boundaries. Do you think we could make some time to talk about sex, what we are comfortable with, what we like and don't like, what we would like to try?'

3.) Remember this simple rule: yes and no are two sides of the same speech bubble. If someone can't say no, yes is meaningless. If they haven't said no that doesn't mean they've said yes. Whenever we say yes to something we say no to something else, whenever we say no to something we say yes to something else.

Example: We say no to sex and at the same time we say yes to our current desire and need to sleep
               We say no to rape and at the same time we say yes to healthy respectful consensual sex
               We say yes to allowing our partner a choice and at the same time say no to sexual manipulation        and violence

So if you want your partner to say:
yes, yes,yes, yes, yes, yes, YES, YES, YES, YES!  to sex
you have to make sure they are able to say no.

Simples.

If you are still unsure about how to ensure you have do not have un-consensual sexual activity and thereby violate another human being and commit an offence check out this blog.

"We're all individuals" - "I'm not"

(Lot's of Life of Brian References) 

However nice "always look on the bright side of life" is as a sentiment, the world would rapidly not be a nice place at all if we only ever spent our time looking at the nice sides. Unfortunately we need to look head on at the nasty bits, call them out and seek to change them. 'Cause sometimes life is "a pile of shit when you look at it", and someone needs to say it.

I feel I have been getting into many different arguments recently, about the Olympic closing ceremony, 50 shades of grey, whether its ok to say female commentators voices are 'grating', whether free market economics will solve all the worlds problems, etc. etc. 

Often I feel like I'm in that crowd of people all chanting 'we are individuals' and being the loan little voice suggesting that maybe we're not. 

The tyranny of western 'freedom' is starting to get me down :(

Let's take 50 shades of grey as an example. The reason I and many others are publicly and loudly stating that this book is about and condones abuse and we suggest people shouldn't buy it, is because we understand the normalising power of popular culture. 

You're reading 50 shades of grey on the tube - now you identify the behaviours of Christian Grey as abusive and would never tolerate it. But the 17 year old girl next to you, whose boyfriend makes her watch porn and who's just seen 50 shades prominently displayed in a bookshop and is now reading a bit over your shoulder, she now feels less able to say no to abuse and coercion. As Gail Dines points out the decision for many young women has come to be 'be a sexual object or be invisible'. 

Now you could say that's not your problem, that a person's right to read what they want shouldn't be infringed, that a book can't cause abuse, that someone else should do something to support this young woman, after all you're an individual, she's an individual, you don't know each other and have nothing to do with each other.

Or you could recognise that every choice you make, from where you keep your money, to what tea you buy, to who you give a platform, to what jokes you laugh at, to what you chose to market and sell, impacts on the degree of constraint or freedom of other people's choices. Now here's a choice: you could choose to let that be important data in your decision making process. 

So you can choose to continue to be in a crowd of individuals making individual choices, and strangely still all heading in the same direction, or you could join the little crowd of people who recognise their need for, and responsibility towards each other.

'What has individualism ever done for us?' Well it's brought us creative freedom, freedom of expression, individual rights etc. etc.  - But I still don't think it should get to be an occupying force. 

ROMANES EUNT DOMUS

Sorry

A poem about looking into the eyes of a girl child while hearing a woman's been shot essentially because she's a woman.


Beautiful new life, little girl, sorry.
In another land our sister was shot
and as you smile my heart is filled with worry
Oh what a world! What a cancerous rot!
As I lay you down in your bed to sleep
From in the dark shadows I'm sure I hear
Men's monstrous laughter seeking to creep
and patriarchal talons drawing near.
Beautiful new life, little girl, sorry.
In another land our sister was shot
And here you begin to write your story
While the world's hate seeks to distort the plot
Beautiful new life, little girl, sorry.
We've been hated since the fall from glory.